Zendesk Neighbor Foundation 2016 Annual Report

At Zendesk, we believe in building better relationships—with our customers, between our employees, and with our local community. Founded in 2015, The Zendesk Neighbor Foundation works to connect our global offices and employees with the local communities they call home. We take a hyperlocal approach (everywhere from San Francisco to London to Singapore to Sao Paulo) to giving back and focus on addressing homelessness and poverty, technical literacy, neighborhood improvement, diversity and gender equality, workforce development, and education in the communities where we have offices. In 2016, we continued this work and we are delighted to announce the launch of the Zendesk Neighbor Foundation 2016 Annual Report, which captures our accomplishments throughout the year.

Volunteering around the world

Last year was a fantastic period of growth and achievement for the Neighbor Foundation. We focused on strengthening existing partnerships, as well as seeking to expand our reach and impact. In 2016, the Zendesk Neighbor Foundation donated $1.3 million in the communities where we work, contributing almost four times more this year than we did in 2015. Our employees also spent over 5,600 hours volunteering with out 62 partner non-profit organizations around the globe. We plan on continuing this momentum in 2017 with ambitious goals of supporting our neighbors through 20,000 volunteer hours and over $1.3 million in grants.

Year over year growth

This year, we tried something new and built the annual report using Zendesk’s own analytics and data product, Explore. Using Explore allows for a more interactive experience where you are able to highlight specific offices engagement, breakdown by focus area, and visualize our year-over-year growth. With this new platform, our report will no longer be stagnant throughout the year: We will be able to have greater transparency by updating the report quarterly, providing a living document.

We want to give a special thanks to all our nonprofit partners for their hard work and dedication. As we enter into 2017, we invite our Zendesk community—customers, employees, and neighbors—to join us in continuing to positively impact our neighborhoods.